‘The various crops,’ says Mr. Stuart, ‘raised in that part of the state of New York which I have seen, are very much the same as in Britain, with the addition of maize, for which the climate of Britain is not well adapted. Wheat, however, is the most valuable crop. A considerable quantity of buckwheat and rye is grown. The greater degree of heat is not favorable for oats and barley. Potatoes, turnips, and other green crops, are not at all generally cultivated in large fields. Rotation of crops is far too little attended to. I observe in the magazines and almanacs, that in the rotations, a crop of turnips, ruta-baga, or other green plants, is generally put down as one part of the course; but I have nowhere seen more than the margins or edges of the maize, or other grain, devoted to the green crop, properly so called. The attention of the farmers seems chiefly directed to the raising enough of maize for home consumption, and of wheat for sale; and when you talk to them of the necessity of manuring, with a view to preserve the fertility of the soil, they almost uniformly tell you that the expense of labor, about a dollar a day, for laborers during the summer, renders it far more expedient for them, as soon as their repeated cropping very much diminishes the quantity of the grain, to lay down their land in grass, and make a purchase of new land in the neighborhood, or even to sell their cleared land, and proceed in quest of a new settlement, than to adopt a system of rotation of crops, assisted by manure. There is great inconvenience, according to the notions of the British, in removing from one farm to another; but they make very light work of it here, and consider it to be merely a question of finance, whether they shall remain on their improved land, after they have considerably exhausted its fertilizing power, or acquire and remove to land of virgin soil. In a great part of the northern district of the state of New York, there is still a great deal of land to be cleared; and a farmer may, in many cases, acquire additions to his farm, so near his residence that his houses may suit the purpose of his new acquisition; but he is more frequently tempted to sell at a price from fifteen to thirty dollars an acre, supposing the land not to be contiguous to any village. If he obtains land near his first farm, after he has worn it out,he lays down the first farm in grass, allows it to be pastured for some years, and breaks it up again with oats.
‘Maize, or Indian corn, which, par excellence, is alone in this country called corn, is a most important addition to the crops which we are able to raise in Britain. It is used as food for man in a great variety of ways, as bread, as porridge, in which case it is called mush, and in puddings. When unripe, and in the green pod, it is not unlike green peas, and is in that state sold as a vegetable. One species, in particular, called green corn, is preferable for this purpose. Broom corn is another species, of the stalks of which a most excellent kind of clothes brush, in universal use at New York, is made, as well as brooms for sweeping house floors. Horses, cattle, and poultry, are all fond of this grain, and thrive well on it. The straw is very nutritive, and considerable in quantity. The usual period of sowing is from the fifteenth of May to the first of June, in drills from three and a half to four and a half feet apart, and the seed from four to six inches apart. It is harvested in October, sometimes later. The hoe weeding and cleaning of this crop is expensive, the whole work being performed by males,—females, as already noticed, never being allowed to work out of doors. Pumpkins are very generally sown between the rows of corn, and give the field quite a golden appearance, after the corn itself is harvested.
‘Thirty-five or forty bushels of corn per acre is considered a good average crop, on land suited to it, well prepared, and well managed; but one hundred and fifty bushels have been raised on an acre. Arthur Young remarks, “that a country whose soil and climate admit the course of maize, and then wheat, is under a cultivation that perhaps yields the most food for man and beast that is possible to be drawn from the land!” That course is frequently adopted here, and with success, where the soil, lately cleared, is of the best description, and might, without question, be continued for many years, if a sufficient quantity of manure was allowed; but where such a course is persisted in without manure, after the land has been severely cropped, the crops which follow are inferior in quantity to crops of the same description on similar soils in Britain. As a cleaning crop, maize is most valuable, but, being a culmiferous plant, it is, of course, far more exhausting than the green crops, which, in Britain, in most cases precede wheat.
‘Wheat is sown in the end of September, and some part of it in spring,—if after maize, it should be sown as soon as possible after that crop is harvested. It is reaped in July. It is excellent in quality; if the flour which we have seen in every place where we have been, and the bread we eat, are tests by which to judge of it. Thirty-five and forty bushels of wheat is considered a very abundant crop,—the average produce in that part of the United States in which wheat is grown, is said not to exceed thirteen bushels, while in England it is reckoned at twenty-five bushels.
‘Barley or oats very frequently succeed wheat before the land is laid down in grass, or again bears a crop of maize; but it is not to be understood that barley, and even oats, do not in many cases follow the crop of maize immediately, and precede the wheat crop.
‘Oats are sowed in the end of April and beginning of May, and are reaped in August or the beginning of September. We saw several fields not cut, but no very great crop in the northern part of this state in thebeginning of September. The average crop is said to be twenty bushels per acre; but from forty to fifty bushels are often obtained by good management. The grain is not so plump as in Britain. In 1827, the premium of one of the agricultural societies was given for fifty-seven bushels on an acre. Barley is sown at about the same time as oats, and reaped two or three weeks earlier; the produce about one fifth less than oats.
‘Potatoes, turnips, ruta-baga, peas, lucern, &c. are all to be seen here in small quantities, but not so well managed as in well-cultivated districts of Britain. The high price of labor is the great obstacle to the management which those crops require. It is not because the farmer does not understand his business, that such crops are apparently not sufficiently attended to, but because he in all cases calculates whether it will not be more profitable for him to remove his establishment to a new and hitherto unimpoverished soil, than to commence and carry on an extensive system of cultivation, by manuring and fallow, or green crops. Such a system may be adopted in the neighborhood of great towns, where many green crops are easily disposed of, and where manure can be had in large quantity, and at a cheap rate; but it is in vain to look for its adoption at all generally, or to expect to see agricultural operations in their best style, until the land, even in the most distant states and territories, be occupied, so that the farmer may no longer find it more for his interest to begin his operations anew, on land previously uncultivated, than to manage his farm according to the method which will render it most productive.
‘Prices of grain vary much. Wheat is, of course, the grain which the farmer chiefly raises for market, and he considers himself remunerated, if the price is not below a dollar for a bushel. Flour, when wheat is at a dollar per bushel, is expected to bring somewhat more than five dollars per barrel of one hundred and ninety-six pounds. Indian corn, two shillings to two shillings and six pence per bushel; oats, one shilling and two pence to one shilling and four pence; barley, one shilling and six pence to one shilling and eight pence.
‘It is difficult to give any precise information as to the wages of labor. A hired servant gets from ten to twelve dollars a month, besides his board, which he very frequently has at table with his master, consisting of animal food three times a day. Laborers hired by the day for those sorts of farm work in which women are employed in Britain, such as hoeing, assisting in cleaning grain, and even milking of cows, get about three quarters of a dollar per day,—in time of hay-making or harvest work, frequently a dollar besides their board. The workmen work, or are said to work, from daylight to sunset: but I doubt, from any thing I have seen, whether the ordinary plan of keeping workmen employed for ten hours a day be not as profitable to the employer as to the workman. The days are never so long in summer, nor so short in winter, as in Britain. The sun rises on the twenty-first of June about half past four, and sets at half past seven; on the twenty-first of December, it rises at half past seven, and sets at half past four.
‘Manures are far too little attended to, as has been already noticed; but there are instances of individuals keeping their land in good heart with manure, especially where, as in many parts of the state of New York, gypsum and lime are in the neighborhood. Gypsum is more used than any other manure, and with great effect, generally in about the quantityof a ton to ten or fifteen acres. Manure for the villages is often sold at and under a shilling per ton. The question which the American settler always puts to himself is, whether it will be more expedient for him, in point of expense, to remove to a new soil covered with vegetable mould, or to remain on his cleared land, and to support its fertility by regularly manuring, and a systematic rotation of crops.